In early June, the Indiana University Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affairs launched a university-side diversity assessment. To ensure an objective and comprehensive valuation, outside consultants Halualani and Associates are conducting the assessment of IU Northwest as well as IU’s six other campuses and the office itself.
Individuals from the campus and community are encouraged to complete a survey of IU Northwest’s diversity efforts to ensure the most complete and accurate representation. The survey will be open until January 12, 2016 and can be found at: https://sjsu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8owlwrrsDo9pQW1
“The diversity assessment being conducted by Halualani and Associates will give IU Northwest an opportunity to identify and measure the success of our diversity and inclusionary efforts, highlight effective practices that may have received little notice, identify dimensions of diversity that may require additional support, and allow us to collect the necessary data to inform our work as we begin to update our campus strategic diversity plan,” said James Wallace, IU Northwest’s Director of Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affairs. “This session will give our community an opportunity to participate in the process and suggest issues of particular concern for our campus.”
The 18-month assessment involves mapping diversity and inclusion as well as retention-graduation efforts in the past five years; comparing IU Bloomington and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis to five of their external peers; creating a diverse faculty and student recruitment projection for IU; and performing an external assessment of the diversity office.
“The assessment will serve as a baseline measurement for IU and each campus in diversity achievement and progress, which will provide information to further our efforts for strategic planning university-wide,” said James Wimbush, vice president for diversity, equity and multicultural affairs.
The first phase of our work is on schedule, with diversity mapping efforts for each regional campus delivered at the end of April,” said Rona Halualani, managing principal and founder of Halualani and Associates. “Diversity mapping represents a valuable process of inquiry for any campus beginning to form or refine an institution-wide diversity strategy or master plan. This practice can provide a sense of where the institution has been, where it currently is and how it has operationalized diversity and inclusive excellence, in both intentional and unintentional ways.”
Halualani and Associates will begin “web-scraping” on December 1, the first mode of data collection for campus mapping efforts. Next, they will examine diversity efforts submitted by campus and community members through an online survey, recognizing both formal and informal diversity efforts at the unit and department level.
Diversity efforts are taking place across IU campus communities that are not documented or formally recognized; therefore, it is important that campus and community members take the time to submit diversity efforts to inform the assessment results.
Upon conclusion of their evaluation, Halualani and Associates will provide a report detailing what each campus, including IU Northwest, is doing in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion; measure student success, retention and graduation of diverse students; and ultimately, reveal the state of diversity work at the campuses of IU.
More information about the assessment is available at http://www.iun.edu/diversity/diversity-assessment/index.htm.
For more information, contact James Wallace at (219) 980-6601 or jamewall@iun.edu.